The Muscovite Polymath and the PCA's C Student Graders

Well, Doug Wilson, the pied piper of Moscow, is at it again. In the aftermath of the letter signed by a few brave souls willing to have our names dragged through the mud by the FV attack dogs, Doug has cranked up the FV toady machine again.

But, this time the attack/defense is even more intriguing. To the normal line of, "Duh, we're just teaching what Reformed people have always thought and believed," and conversely, "We cannot be bound by our tradition. We need to transcend it. We are offering a revision of Reformed theology," he's added, "People who don't get it are just dunces."

And, I don't blame him. After all, John Piper of all people, to my bottomless disappointment, gave this view a public airing! PCA types who think Wilson is out to lunch are just stupid, that's all.

Well, that may, in fact, be true. We could be dunces, however, like Petronella Baltus, the unlettered Dutch peasant, who dared take on the towering intellect of an Abraham Kuyper and lead him to Christ. Stupid people can be right about things, after all. It's a fallacy to suggest that a person's dimwittedness means that he is wrong.

And sometimes even the C student catches the professor being less than intellectually honest. The typical FV tactic is to quote some Reformed father incompletely or out of context, and find some credence for the FV's view. Such is the case here.

Our disingenuous professor, hiding behind his Latin, would suggest to us that Turretin, the greatest of all scholastic theologians, is (gasp) teaching that a person is saved by faithful obedience --the same faithful obedience that saved Adam!!

And, what is more, Turretin denies the Law-Gospel distinction, that inconvenient Lutheran antinomian contraption.

Can it be true? Can the adversaries of the FV have misunderstood their own tradition that badly? It appears to be the case. We all ought to move to Moscow, get a really nice wine cellar, start a business, raise our own chickens, and contribute to the cathedral fund.

But, once again the Pope of the CRE is shown to have no clothes. Even the C student can see that. Why? Because Wilson completely misses Turretin's point, which is to uphold the first use of the Law, as preparatory to the gospel. To wit (from Turretin, vol. 2, p.268):

(The Law) by convincing man of his sin and weakness it forced him to seek a remedy in Christ by faith (as we have already said --duh)(I added the duh, KP). Again, these two conditions are proposed because they are necessary to the salvation of the sinner: perfect obedience in Christ to fulfill the righteousness of the law, without which the justice of God did not permit life to be given to us; faith however in us that the perfect obedience and satisfaction of Christ might be applied to us and become ours by imputation.

Gasp! What are you saying, Frank? Conditions on the covenant of grace? For whom?? Doug says, "Well, duh, the faithful obedient believer. He must fulfill the law-faith, or the faith-law, or the fatal flaw," or something like that.

But that is not what Turretin is saying. I continue:

That what was demanded of us in the covenant of works (what? a covenant of works???) is fulfilled by Christ in the covenant of grace. Nor is it absurd that in this way justification takes place by works and by faith by the works of Christ, and by our faith.

So you see how omitting entire central portions of a paragraph can completely twist the author's point. There are some folk who take the Mosaic Covenant, and completely abstract it out, and set it in opposition to the Covenant of Grace. I think that is a mistake. Turretin shows us why. He shows us that the same Covenant that is all grace to us, in which the only condition (his words) is faith, was, for the Lord Jesus, a covenant of works --that is, a reward for his obedience. That he might receive all the glory.

But, C students don't like to use words like nuda lex and get confused by statements like "justification by persevering obedient faithfulness" and "Christians go to Hell. " These statements tend to confuse the sheep, or maybe they just confuse the goats. Our congregants hear such things, their eyes roll back in their heads, and they gag on their tongues. At least those who have the Holy Spirit, and who know the true gospel notes when they are sounded, whether smart or dumb.